KABUL, 29 February 2008 — Afghanistan yesterday rejected as “far from reality” a US assessment that the Taleban had regained control of a tenth of the country and the government was in charge of just a third. The Afghan government was in control of all 34 provinces and most districts, the Defense Ministry said in a statement.
“The Defense Ministry considers such statements far from reality,” it said after US Director of National Intelligence, Mike McConnell, told a Senate committee that Taleban were able to control 11 percent of the country. McConnell also said Wednesday that President Hamid Karzai’s government was in charge of only about 30 percent and the rest was controlled by local strongmen.
The ministry said Afghan security forces across the country obeyed orders and all officials were appointed by the government. If in some “rare cases” local powerbrokers were put in important posts this was done considering national unity, it said.
The statement added that with the expansion and growing strength of Afghan forces, the influence of local powers had decreased steadily since the collapse of the Taleban government in 2001. Officials have admitted militants control at least three districts in the restive southern province of Helmand but there are other areas where government authority is tenuous and the security forces weak or allied with the rebels.
Meanwhile, 29 Taleban were killed trying to protect opium crops from eradication in southern Afghanistan, most of them in a six-hour gunfight with police, officials said yesterday. A senior commander was among the dead in the clashes in Helmand province, the top opium-producing area in Afghanistan, which churns out 90 percent of the world’s supply to make heroin for Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East.
Rebels on Wednesday used rockets and gunfire to attack a team that was destroying opium poppy crops in remote Marja district, provincial police chief Gen. Mohammad Hussein Andiwal told AFP. A police vehicle was badly damaged and a policeman was wounded.
Police reinforcements were sent to the area and the fighting accelerated, lasting well into the night, Andiwal said. “The six-hour fighting killed 25 Taleban and two Taleban were arrested,” he said.
Four more rebels were killed yesterday when a land mine exploded as they were planting it for the eradication team, he said. The Interior Ministry said that a Taleban commander named Mullah Naqeebullah was among the dead in Wednesday’s fighting. He had twice escaped from Afghan jails, it said in a statement.
A spokesman for Taleban, Yousuf Ahmadi, confirmed that Taleban fighters were involved in the incident but said only one was killed.
Helmand sees some of the worst violence linked to a Taleban-led insurgency which officials say is funded in part by a 10 percent tax that the rebel movement takes from opium farmers.
Officials admit the Taleban, who were in government between 1996 and 2001, control a handful of districts in the province but say they will be removed. The rebels used the Helmand town of Musa Qala as a base for 10 months before they were ejected in December by Afghan and international soldiers.
In another development, a US military spokesman said the US military has evidence that a young journalist detained at the main US detention center in Afghanistan for more than three months is an “unlawful enemy combatant.”.
Maj. Chris Belcher, a spokesman at the US base at Bagram north of Kabul, could, however, not give details of the allegations against 22-year-old Jawad Ahmad, who has worked with Canadian Television (CTV).
A review by a military board had “determined that there was credible information to detain him as an unlawful enemy combatant,” Belcher told AFP. “He poses a threat to our forces and the government,” he said. The case would be reviewed every six months, he said.
